The overall purpose of this meeting is to bring together the leading scientists in the United States, Japan, and Europe to discuss their most recent research results on the role of "Metallothionein in Biology and Medicine". It is appropriate that scientists from the US and Japan organize this meeting as many of the leading scientists working on metallothionein are from these two nations. The work on metallothionein grew out of the environmental contamination in Japan with cadmium resulting in the disease known as Itai-Itai. As a result of this exposure, most research has been performed in the United States and Japan to further understand the toxicity of cadmium. Great progress has been made in understanding the structure of this protein. Not only has the amino acid sequence of metallothionein been determined, but the molecular biology and the characterization of binding of metals to metallothionein has been extensively delineated the last few years, however the function f this protein has been illusive. Therefore, the objective of the meeting is to bring together scientists researching the function of metallothionein as well as few experts on the chemistry and molecular biology of metallothionein (who do not often have the opportunity to interact because they come from various disciplines) to have a scientific meeting where new concepts, new approaches, and hopefully a breakthrough in understanding the function of metallothionein will be obtained.